Tag: transgender fighters

I won’t go into more than has been written on this site on the subject of Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender MMA fighter, who was born a man and then underwent (and continues to undergo) hormone treatments and surgery to change her sex, but you definitely need to watch the video above.

AXS TV Fights recently interviewed Fox. During that conversation, Fox was asked if she felt she had an advantage over her opponents in Women’s MMA who were, you know, born women. Fallon went further than saying that she and her opponents were equally matched — she assured that she was, in fact, at a disadvantage.

If I know anything about the CagePotato audience, you probably stopped reading right there, so I will see you and your outrage in the comments section.

Let me make one thing clear from the very beginning: I’m not trying to say that it wasn’t newsworthy — even inspirational — when Fallon Foxfirst came out as a transgender MMA fighter. Transgender individuals are extremely prone to harassment, discrimination, violence and bigoted stereotyping — all tragically evident by looking at the Facebook posts and tweets that have been directed at Fox since she came out roughly one month ago. I am in full support of her rights to be socially acknowledged and treated as any other woman would be treated outside of the cage.

Despite the punishment, UFC fighters are still willing to discuss Fallon Fox — who, let’s remember, doesn’t even fight in the UFC — with reporters. Yesterday, The New York Post published an interview with one of the most talented, popular, and accomplished female fighters of all time, Ronda Rousey. A total of zero questions had anything to do with Rousey’s own future in the sport, instead focusing on how she feels about potentially fighting Fallon Fox:

“She can try hormones, chop her pecker off, but it’s still the same bone structure a man has,” Rousey told The Post. “It’s an advantage. I don’t think it’s fair.”

In either case, Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation ruled earlier today that there was insufficient evidence to declare that Fox had committed any fraudulent activities prior to her last bout in Florida. A quick recap of what went down: While applying for a fight license in Florida, Fox claimed that she had already received a license in California, when in reality she had only applied for a license and received a receipt she mistook for a license in return.

With all of the controversy surrounding the career of transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox, it should come as little surprise that reporters have been asking athletes — regardless of their sexes — for their take on whether or not she should be allowed to fight. The latest fighter to voice his opinion on the controversial competitor is none other than UFC Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, who isn’t as open to the idea of allowing Fox to fight against other women as some of us are.

Like many people, Velasquez believes that Fox holds an unfair advantage over her competition, and should only be allowed to fight other transgender athletes. Via MMAFighting:

“I don’t think she should be able to fight women,” Velasquez flatly responded when asked about Fox at a recent media luncheon.

“Having the same bone structure and everything else as a man, I think definitely does give her an advantage.”

For those of you who don’t know, Fallon Fox happens to be a female fighter who was born a man. As you can probably infer from that sentence, there’s been a little controversy since then. Most recently, UFC announcer, professional comedian and…uh, podcaster (is that a thing?) Joe Rogan went on a rant about Fox. Rogan can be abrasive, but he’s an entertaining figure in the sport and generally inquisitive enough to question established narratives. He’s also subject to conspiratorial fancies from time to time, but no one’s ever claimed Rogan’s entirely sound of mind. But given his enthusiasm for the bizarre and his overall tolerance of homosexuality, his recent comments about this situation were rather disappointing. Let’s go through them piece by piece…

“She calls herself a woman but… I tend to disagree. And, uh, she, um… she used to be a man but now she has had, she’s a transgender which is (the) official term that means you’ve gone through it, right? And she wants to be able to fight women in MMA. I say no fucking way. I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick. You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints. You’re a fucking man. That’s a man, OK? You can’t have… that’s… I don’t care if you don’t have a dick any more…”

First off — Rogan’s simply incorrect here. If you’ve been on hormones for as long as Fox has, your bone structure does change. And while the hands of Fox might never be the same size as Kim Kardashian’s, that doesn’t matter. There’s a spectrum of physical discrepancy across female athletes, and the question isn’t whether Fox’s physique is larger than most, but whether it fits into that established paradigm. In this case, she does. But more than this, the problem with Rogan’s statements is his tone…

“You can’t fight women. That’s fucking crazy. I don’t know why she thinks that she’s going to be able to do that. If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and you know you want to play house and all of that other shit and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman’s body trapped inside a man’s frame and so you got a operation, that’s all good in the hood. But you can’t fight chicks. Get the fuck out of here. You’re out of your mind. You need to fight men, you know? Period. You need to fight men your size because you’re a man. You’re a man without a dick.